“How many books do you have on your shelves that are unread?” is probably a question that’s better left unanswered (although, I’ll have you know it’s not as many as I thought…it’s bad, but not as bad). And when it comes to my good old phrase of “I’ve been meaning to read this one for years!” you can guarantee I’m not exaggerating. But it had me thinking – which books have I been meaning to get round to the longest?

I actually loved doing this post and unearthing the lost treasures on my shelves. Not that they were ever hidden…they just became vastly overshadowed by at least 3 or 4 years worth of shiny new books (yikes). But since I log all the books I own on Goodreads, I managed to trace back the ones I’ve had on my shelves the longest quickly enough. And so here’s the books I gave a home to all those years ago, but have still yet to read…

Today, my lovelies, I’m taking part in a blog tour! It’s been an awful long while since I’ve done one of these, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity when I heard about this book. It caught my attention immediately, and with the need for mystery I’ve been feeling lately, it came at just the right time!

Set in the rainy bushland of the Giralang Ranges, this book follows a team of five women reluctantly sent out on a team building hike. What better way to build team spirit, right? Well, sure…apart from one of them doesn’t come back. Things go downhill real quick when Alice Russell disappears from the group and the rest of the women come back looking worn and disheveled, the situation calling for Aaron Faulk and a whole team of investigators to get involved.

Despite being one of the most popularly known pieces of canonized literature, I still struggle to explain what this book is about beyond “it follows the life of Jane Eyre”. Honestly, I don’t feel like all that much happens for the length of it. But that’s not to say it doesn’t deserve it’s high acclaim. It’s just that when you read a lot of fantasy, you come to expect a lot of events (and numerous opportunities to wield your magic slaying-powers, of course).

So we start off with Jane as a child – a state I can just about manage. It’s far from my favourite stage to read about. To me, the language just seems rigid and almost wrong for her age. I’m well aware that the story is being narrated through an older Jane Eyre’s perspective, recounting her story and being able to add intelligence and hindsight beyond her focused years. But when that language and voice doesn’t change at all in recounting the dialogue of a ten year old…it’s strangely jarring. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it, no matter if it was true to the time period or character. So we’ll just ignore ten-year-old-Jane, okayy? Okayy.

Saying that, Jane Eyre soon grows older – as nature requires – and from that point on I can barely find anything to fault in the book. Because ohhhh it gets intense.

January. The month that seems to last a year, despite being the one to introduce us to a new year in the first place. The irony.

January was a mixed lot. The year ahead looked at once both hopeful and daunting. The weeks preceding only proved it would, indeed, be both. So in every way possible, this month has dragged, a sentiment it seems the majority of the world agrees on. But oh, so much has happened.

A few days ago I uploaded a huge collective book haul to my channel – and while it’s just so much easier to fawn over all the books in actual speech form over there, I also figured...hey, why not spotlight some of the ones I’m really looking forward to reading on my blog? There’s so many books listed in that video (it’s linked at the end if you’d like to see them all!), but some really stand out to me as top priorities for the upcoming months and I basically just want another reason to chat about them all the more.

This list is…a varied one. Honestly I should probably stop giving that warning before any form of book list I provide, because it’s starting to get repetitive 😆 BUT if you want to see everything from the myth retellings and freak cosmic events I’m eager to pluck from my shelves – well, here they are spotlighted

I…wasn’t going to write this post. The niggling voice in my head keeps telling me that to do so would be vain. But I can’t help feeling so overwhelmed with love for the book community in recent days, and so my need to give a proper thank you has managed to stamp that voice down – if only long enough for me to write this post. I may regret it after, but for now let’s go.

A lot has happened in the past week. I’ll go into it more below, but basically…

I’ve been shortlisted for the UKYABA’s under “Best Content and Design”!!

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Following a girl called Emilie as she digs through her family history and inadvertently falls back in time to 1913, I’ve dubbed this one as a less dense version of Outlander – but Canadian. Although, come to think of it, you do still get a Scottish guy, so…

Reading this on a train journey home, I found myself whisked into a history I hadn’t previously seen much of. It’s not often you find books set in Canada, and it made a nice change compared to the usual US or London settings that seem to overwhelm books in general.

I’m not usually one for resolutions or general yearly goals. The sudden unnecessary need to pluck new aims from the air of January never quite hit me as hard as I’d hoped. I set resolutions – of course I did – but oh they were just made up for the sake of it. I’m sure I had an entire post of bookish resolutions in some form or another from last year, but while I would usually look back on that kind of thing, I’ve decided to abandon it this time. I know full well that whatever resolutions I made at that point were just made for the sake of it. I know that while they might have been interesting to me a year ago, I changed midway through the year and so those goals are probably irrelevant now.

So I started 2018 with not specific goals in mind. I’ll just aim to survive, thank you very much. Until I realised…well, I do have things I’m aiming for, they’re just vast and have been worked on for awhile already, and 2018 will simply serve to solidify them in a way. Still, now they’re set in stone on the walls of my mind, so here we are.

I’m setting up this post, not quite knowing what the point of it will be. I’m just sat, confronting my keyboard, with too many thoughts charging round my head. So here’s an attempt at setting them free.

For what felt like the hundredth time, I found myself stuck today. What over? An essay. Again.

I feel like all I ever talk about is essays, but my life is dominated by them at the moment. And it’s not that I can’t handle it – it’s just that with every single one, I reach a point before I’ve barely even begun where I just…stop. I start with my planning. I plan to the extreme. I write pages of notes and pull out quotes from every source available so that once I’m ready, I’m set, I’m confident. And yet I’m not. Because what if it’s not enough? What if I’m just not intelligent enough? And that – that thought alone – is what hits the hardest.

I’m not usually one to pick up crime novels, but after seeing Jess @ReadByJess rave about this one on her YouTube channel, I decided to pick it up. It’s not often they catch my eye, but for some reason this one did, so why not give it a shot?